Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan

Big Red Tiquila

Rick Riordan
1997

Dedication
To
Haley Riordan,
bienvenido
and
a good beginning

1

"Who?" said the man occupying my new
apartment.

"Tres Navarre," I said.

I pressed the lease agreement against the screen door
again so he could see. It was about a hundred degrees on the front
porch of the small in-law apartment. The air-conditioning from inside
was bleeding through the screen door and evaporating on my face.
Somehow that just made it seem hotter.

The man inside my apartment glanced at the paper,
then squinted at me like I was some bizarre piece of modern art.
Through the metal screen he looked even uglier than he probably
was—heavyset, about forty, crew cut, features all pinched toward
the center of his face. He was bare-chested and wore the kind of
thick polyester gym shorts only P.E. coaches wear. Use small words, I
thought.

"I rented this apartment for July fifteenth. You
were supposed to move out by then. It’s July twenty-fourth."

No signs of remorse from the coach. He looked back
over his shoulder, distracted by a double play on the TV. He looked
at me again, now slightly annoyed.

“
Look, asshole," he said. "I told Gary I
needed a few extra weeks. My transfer hasn’t come through yet,
okay? Maybe August you can have it."

We stared at each other. In the pecan tree next to
the steps a few thousand cicadas decided to start their metallic
chirping. I looked back at the cabby who was still waiting at the
curb, happily reading his TV Guide while the meter ran. Then I turned
back to the coach and smiled-friendly, diplomatic.

"Well," I said, "I tell you what. I’ve
got the moving van coming here tomorrow from California. That means
you’ve got to be out of here today. Since you’ve had a free week
on my tab already, I figure I can give you an extra hour or so. I’m
going to get my bags out of the cab, then when I come back you can
let me in and start packing."

If it was possible for his eyes to squint any closer
together, they did. "What the fuck—"

I turned my back on him and went out to the cab. I
hadn’t brought much with me on the plane-one bag for clothes and
one for books, plus Robert Johnson in his carrying cage. I collected
my things, asked the cabby to wait, then walked back up the sidewalk.
Pecans crunched under my feet. Robert Johnson was silent, still
disoriented from his traumatic flight.

The house didn’t look much better on a second take.
Like most of the other sleeping giants on Queen Anne Street, Number
90 had two stories, an ancient green-shingled roof, bare wood siding
where the white paint had peeled away, a huge screened-in-front porch
sagging under tons of red bougainvillea. The right side of the
building, where the in-law’s smaller porch stuck out, had shifted
on its foundations and now drooped down and backward, as if that half
of the house ad suffered a stroke.

The coach had opened the door for me. In fact he was
standing in it now, smiling, holding a baseball bat.

"I said August, asshole," he told me.

I set my bags and Robert Johnson’s cage down on the
bottom step. The coach smiled like you might at a dirty joke. One of
his front teeth was two different colors.

"You ever try dental picks?" I said.

He developed a few new creases on his forehead.

“
What—?"

“
Never mind, " I said. "You got moving
boxes or you just want to put your stuff in Hefty bags? You strike me
as a Hefty-bag man."

“
Fuck you."

I smiled and walked up the steps.

The porch was way too narrow to swing a bat, but he
did his best to butt me in the chest with it. I moved sideways and
stepped in next to him, grabbing his wrist. If you apply pressure
correctly, you can use the
nei guan
point, just above the wrist joint, in place of CPR to stimulate the
heart. One of the reasons Chinese grandmothers wear those long pins
in their hair, in fact, is to prick the
nei
guan
in case someone in the family has a
heart attack. Apply pressure a little harder, and it sends a charge
through the nervous system that is pretty unpleasant.

The coach’s face turned red; his pinched features
loosened up in shock. The bat clattered down the steps. As he doubled
over, clutching his arm, I pushed I through the door.

The TV was still going in the main room—a washed-up
Saturday Night Live comedian was guzzling a light beer, surrounded by
five or six cheerleaders. Nothing else in the room except a mattress
and a pile of clothes in the corner and a tattered easy chair. On the
kitchen counter there was a mound of old dishes and fast-food
cartons. The smell was somewhere between fried meat and sour wet
laundry.

"You’ve done wonders with the place," I
said. “I can see why-"

When I turned around the coach was standing behind me
and his fist was a few inches from my face, coming in for a landing.

I twisted out of its way and pushed down on his wrist
with one hand. With the other hand I slammed up on the elbow, bending
the joint the wrong way. I’m sure I didn’t break it, but I’m
pretty sure it hurt like hell anyway. The coach fell down on the
kitchen floor and I went to check out the bathroom. A toothbrush, one
towel, the new Penthouse on the toilet tank. All the comforts of
home.

It took about fifteen minutes to find a roll of
garbage bags and stuff the coach’s things into them.

"You broke my arm," he told me. He was
still sitting on the kitchen floor, with his eyes tightly closed. I
unplugged the TV and put it outside.

"
Some people like ice for a joint problem like
that," I told him, moving out the chair. “I think it’s
better if I you use a hot-water bottle. Keep it warm for a while. Two
days from now you won’t feel anything."

He told me he’d sue, I think. He told me a lot of
things, but I wasn’t listening much anymore. I was tired, it was
hot, and I was starting to remember why I’d stayed away from San
Antonio for so many years. The coach was in enough pain not to fight
much as I tucked him into the cab with most of his stuff and paid the
cabby to take him to a motel. Leaving the TV and easy chair in the
front yard, I brought my things inside and shut the door behind me.

Robert Johnson slunk out of his cage cautiously when
I opened it. His black fur was slicked the wrong way on one side and
his yellow eyes were wide. He wobbled slightly getting back his land
legs. I knew how he felt. He sniffed the carpet, then looked at me
with total disdain.

"Row," he said.

"Welcome home," I said.
 

2

"Was fixing to evict him one of these days,"
Gary Hales mumbled.

My new landlord didn’t seem too concerned about my
disagreement with the former tenant. Gary Hales didn’t seem too
concerned about anything. Gary was an anemic watercolor of a man. His
eyes, voice, and mouth were all soft and liquid, his skin a
washed-out blue that matched his guayabera shirt. I got the feeling
he might just dilute down to nothing if he I got caught in a good
rain.

He stared at our finalized lease as if he were trying
to remember what it was. Then he read it one more time, his lips
moving, his shaky hand following each line with the tip of a black
pen. He got stuck on the signature line. He frowned. “Jackson?"

"Legally," I told him. "Tres, as in
the Third. Usually I go by that, unless you’re my mother and you’re
mad at me, in which case it’s Jackson."

Gary stared at me.

“
Or occasionally ‘Asshole,’ " I offered.

Gary’s pale eyes had started to glaze over. I
thought I’d probably lost him after "legally," but he
surprised me.

"
Jackson Navarre," he said slowly. "Like
that sheriff that got kilt?"

I took the lease out of Gary’s hand and folded it
up. "Yeah," I said. “Like that."

Then the wall started ringing. Gary’s eyes floated
over listlessly to where the sound had come from. I waited for an
explanation.

"She axed me for the number here," he said,
like he was reminding himself about it. "Told her I’d change
the name over to you t’morrow."

He shuffled across the room and pulled a built-in
ironing board out from the living—room wall. In the alcove behind
it was an old black rotary phone.

I picked it up on the fourth ring and said: “Mother,
you’re unbelievable."

She sighed loudly into the receiver, a satisfied kind
of sound.

"Just an old beau at Southwestern Bell, honey.
Now when are you coming over?"

I thought about it. The prospect wasn’t pleasant
after the day I’d had. On the other hand, I needed transportation.

"Maybe this evening. I’ll need to borrow the
VW if you’ve still got it. "

“
It’s been sitting in my garage for ten years,"
she said. "You think it’ll run you’re welcome to it. I
expect you’ll be visiting Lillian tonight?"

In the background at my mother’s house I heard the
sound of a pool cue breaking a setup. Somebody laughed.

"Mother—"

"All right, I didn’t ask. We’ll see you
later on, dear."

After Gary had shuffled back over to the main part of
the house, I checked my watch. Three o’clock San Francisco time.
Even on Saturday afternoon there was still a good chance I could
reach Maia Lee at Terrence & Goldman.

No such luck. When her voice mail got through
explaining to me what “regular business hours" meant, I left
my new number, then held the line for a second longer, thinking about
what to say. I could still see Maia’s face the way it looked this
morning at five when she dropped me off at SFO—smiling, a sisterly
kiss, someone polite whom I didn’t recognize. I hung up the phone.

I found some vinegar and baking soda in the pantry
and spent an hour cleaning away the sights and smells of the former
tenant from the bathroom while Robert Johnson practiced climbing the
shower curtain.

A little before sunset somebody knocked on my door.

“
Mother," I grumbled to myself. Then I looked
out the window and saw it wasn’t quite that bad—just a couple of
uniformed cops leaning against their unit in the driveway, waiting. I
opened the front door and saw the second ugliest face I’d seen
through my screen door so far today.

"You know," the man croaked, "somebody
just handed me this complaint from one Bob Langston of 90 Queen
Anne’s Street. Guy’s a G-7 at Fort Sam, no less. Assault, it
says. Trespassing, it says. Langston claims some maniac named Navarre
tried to karate him to death, for Christ’s sake."

I was surprised how much he’d changed. His cheeks
had hollowed out like craters and he’d gone bald to the point where
he had to comb a greasy flap of side hair over the top just to keep
up appearances. About the only things he had more of were stomach and
mustache. The former covered his twenty-pound belt buckle. The latter
covered his mouth almost down to his double chins. I remember as a
kid wondering how he lit his cigarettes without setting his face on
fire.

"Jay Rivas," I said.

Maybe he smiled. There was no way to tell under the
whiskers. Somehow he located his lips with a cigarette and took a
long drag.

"So you know what I tell the guys?" Rivas
asked. "I say no way. No way could I be so lucky as to have
Jackson Navarre’s baby boy back in town from San Fag-cisco to bring
sunlight into my dreary life. That’s what I tell them."

"It was
tai chi chuan
,
Jay, not karate. Purely defensive."

"What the fuck, kid, " he said, leaning his
hand against the door frame. "You just about
kimcheed
this guy’s arm off. Give me a reason I shouldn’t treat you to
some free accommodations at the County Annex tonight. "

I referred him to Gary Hales’s and my lease
agreement, then told him about Mr. Langston’s less-than-warm
reception. Rivas seemed unimpressed.